The destiny of Sarajevo.

• Author: Dzamonja, Dario
• Position: Journal Entry - Column

I met Tiho while walking along Titova Street. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was swollen. I had just opened my mouth to ask, "Where did you pass out last night?" thinking he had a dreadful hangover. But he forestalled me by placing his hand on my shoulder.

"My little one," he cried. "They're breaking us!"

(I am nearly forty years old, married, and the father of one child, but in this relationship I shall always remain "little one," as we had become friends in secondary school, and I was younger by a couple of years, at an age when a couple of years made a vast difference.)

I didn't understand what he was trying to say. He continued as if he had to tear every word from his heart.

"They have killed Hamic."

Hamic had been more than just our friend. He had a small screen-printing shop which, on account of the war, he had turned into a free cafeteria for refugees and the city's poor. We regularly stopped in for coffee, a "little glass of conversation," or whenever we needed help--be it financial assistance or just one's need to get something off his mind, from marriage problems to trouble at work. Hamic always had a good word for everyone and about everything. No one, as far as I can remember, ever spoke poorly of him.

Tiho continued, "They're breaking us--they've cut off our head."

We stood there in the middle of the street, shielded from sniper fire by a concrete block on which the words PINK FLOYD had been spray-painted--a clear allusion to the rock group's gloomy words, "All in all, you are just another brick in the wall"--and we cried.

People passed us by yet didn't pay any attention to us because, in Sarajevo, it was not at all unusual to see adults, in broad daylight and without an ounce of shame, weeping bitterly in the street.

Only the day before, I had spoken with Hamic and suggested that he move to my apartment because it was safer than his home, which was on the slopes of Trebevic and in the line of fire. He had refused for the sake of his mother, an old woman who was the only other one staying in the house, his younger relatives having joined the army.

The first shell hit the house next door. Hamic ran out in the middle of the night to help. Then a second shell hit the street and cut him in half.

All the suffering and horrors of the past faded before this feeling of utter helplessness: For the first time, someone genuinely close to me had been killed. I would never see him again, never shake his hand, never hear his voice...